Verizon Wireless is suing an Ormond, Fla-based company for sending mobile spam to 98,000 of its customers. The wireless carrier says that Passport Holidays used illegal dialing equipment to send large numbers of text messages to its customers, telling them they had won cruises to the Bahamas. It claims further that Passport, which employs "currently unknown individuals," tried to avoid Verizon's spam filters, successfully sending about a quarter of the messages to customers with sequential phone numbers. Verizon Wireless says it is suing the Florida-based travel company not only to stamp out mobile spam but also to figure out how Passport did it. Analysts estimate that if each of the 98,000 customers who received the spam message called Verizon to complain, it would cost the company between $500,000 and $1 million.
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Not to be outdone by Sirius, which has received considerable press for a new celebrity line-up that includes Howard Stern and Martha Stewart, pay radio rival XM has enlisted the services of New York Yankees Shortstop Derek Jeter. Jeter will promote the satellite radio provider's baseball broadcasts and appear regularly on its baseball channel. In turn, XM has become a partner in Jeter's Turn 2 Foundation, a nonprofit promoting healthy, drug-free lifestyles for young people. The agreement comes on the heels of a media blitz being orchestrated by New York-based Sirius, XM's one and only rival in pay-for satellite radio, for Stern and Stewart, its two newest celebrity personalities. While Sirius has been getting all the press recently, XM still has more listeners. The two have also been in a power struggle over securing quality content: XM has the exclusive rights to Major League Baseball, while Sirius broadcasts the National Football League.
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Google is now testing a new form of pay-per-call on its search results pages. When searchers see a phone icon next to a company's sponsored listing, they can enter their phone number and have Google connect them to the company for free. The system dials the search user first and then the merchant. This means that Google, in addition to having your entire search history on file, now has your phone number, too. In its FAQ, Google attempts to address privacy concerns by saying it stores phone call information for less than four months, and blocks users' numbers from advertisers. Google confirmed the tests but declined to comment about its plans for the service. Pay-per-call is currently supplied by a string of small technology firms. Google is the first major company to enter the burgeoning sector of local search, which the Kelsey Group pegs at up to $4 billion by 2009.
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Earlier this week, a technical glitch let pornographic results seep into Google Base, Google's free index of classified listings and other user-generated content. The post-anything database allows adult content but lets users filter these results through its SafeSearch feature, which wasn't working Tuesday, according to a Google spokesperson. With the filter turned off, seemingly innocuous search terms like people's names would return sexual material. Cnet said it searched terms like "XXX" and received more than 14,000 results--a staggeringly high number for a database that's only a week old. One blogger, impressed by the amount of adult content, said Google Base "could become a huge source for porn." Google said adult content only makes up a small part of the information on Google Base.
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